Dead and Frozen While Sleeping and Waking
by ScarlettBladeDancer
Summary: Never again waking up to find someone who smiled at you and pulled you closer when you met their eyes.


**Dead and Frozen While Sleeping and Waking**

Don't touch me.Gin, please, it's just...._Don't touch me._

The door swung closed behind him and warm silence filled the room again. Dulled sunbeams shone tiredly through the dirty windows and cut across the bare wooden floor at her feet. She closed her eyes and leaned her bright head against the filthy glass, grateful for the fragile filter it gave her against the loud, harsh, blaring world. Somehow everything had become too much for her afterward. But no one seemed to understand. They tried to cheer her up, gave her candy, told her jokes, hugged and kissed her. She shuddered. Their touches disgusted her. Their happiness disgusted her. Their existence disgusted her. Yes, the days were bad, there was no denying it.

The nights were hell.

Even before, she had always found it difficult to fall asleep. At Hogwarts, darkness took on new fears that not even the presence of snoring classmates could dispel. The oblivion of sleep became frightening in its own way. She could never be sure what was waiting where she could no longer fight back, and no one could help her.

Now it was the loneliness that kept her away from her dreams, the one place where she could still be happy. No breath matching her own. No gentle pressure of a head resting against hers. No one else's warmth to curl up in. No smell of another body before a morning shower, foreign and slightly sweaty, but sweet. Never again the comfort of not caring what you looked like, sleep-tousled and drowsy. Never again waking up to find someone who smiled at you and pulled you closer when you met their eyes.

The first time she had ever woken up to find herself next to him, they hadn't even had sex. It was before they'd ever really talked, actually, back when everyone was suspicious and unsure of him. Before she had been able to see him as anything but a bastard and likely a double-crossing spy. No one understood why Dumbledore had let him join the Order, least of all Ginny. True, the events during the winter of her fifth year had had strange effects on many of the Slytherins at Hogwarts, but Draco had seemed entirely untouched. Quiet as he had grown after the deaths of his mother and father, no one noticed the changes which must have been taking place all year. Still, Ginny suspected there was something terrible behind his request to Dumbledore to become a spy with the Order, but she was too scared to ask. Not that she cared, at first. No matter what Dumbledore said, she was certain that Draco was still arrogant, still cruel, still obnoxious, and above all, still evil. People like him, she knew, never changed, no matter what happened.

But people can always change. She was living proof of that.

Bouncy, happy, confident Ginny Weasley was born to fight. The excitement, the danger, and even the horror of a battle against Death Eaters was what she was meant to do, of that she was sure. It ran in her blood, for Merlin's sake! Look at her uncles, Gideon and Fabian, the twin Prewetts who fought like heroes for the Order in the last war. Bill and Charlie were already two of the bravest and most trusted people fighting in the ranks of the Phoenix. It was her destiny, her greatest dream, besides playing Quidditch beside her brothers. Her favorite game as child was Aurors and Death Eaters; the twins and her would gang up on the reluctant Percy and Ron to demonstrate the inevitable triumph of good over bad. And that was the shape of her life for many years.

Then came Tom. Ginny knew now that evil was far stronger than good could ever be. She would fight, of course. It was only expected. But _she_ knew the battle was already lost. No one would ever triumph against the ruthlessness and mindless hate that Voldemort possessed. Everyone put Ginny's transformation after first year down to the trauma of her encounter in the Chamber of Secrets. But that was only part of it. The real change was deep within her mind: the plague of despair and disillusionment had taken root and wouldn't been shaken. She learned to disguise it and put up a smiling mask, a weak imitation of her former cheerful attitude. It fooled her family and her brother's friends, and any of her own classmates who dared to become friendly with the sister of Harry Potter's best friend.

And so it was, right through fifth year and the horrific winter attack on Hogwarts. The Order took her and the Trio in to stay with them at Grimmauld Place after the slaughter of their classmates. To their astonishment and confusion, Malfoy came with them. Dumbledore would only say that Draco had taken his own path, and they were forced to leave it at that.

A few days before Christmas, Ginny was sitting beside the fire and crying. She hadn't meant to, of course. She'd been innocently curled up on the recently de-Chizpurfled sofa (which had led some to wonder exactly what magical powers the hitherto innocent-seeming piece of furniture might be hiding, as Chizpurfles were interested only in intensely magical objects), reading. But when the last person had bid her good night and gone upstairs, it all suddenly pressed down on her mind and became too much. The deaths at Hogwarts, especially of Luna and Colin, singled out for not hiding far enough under their house tables, the loss of Sirius the previous year, Bill's brutal torture at the hands of Bellatrix and Rodolphus Lestrange, and her own incapacitating fear for those who were still unharmed, Ron and Harry and the twins and her parents and Hermione and....

The tears began to fall before she could stop them, burning her skin as her body shook with repressed misery. Her hair spilled around her face as she buried her head in her arms and sobbed; evil was winning, just as it always had, and there was no hope to be had.

A small noise from the corner made her jerk upright with shock. Malfoy was sitting in a chair in the shadow of a monstrous mahogany china cabinet, so quietly that she hadn't noticed him all night. He stood up carefully, and crossed the dimly lit room in two long strides to sit on the opposite end of the couch. He didn't touch her. He didn't say a word. He didn't even look at her. He merely stared into the flickering flames with her and thought his own thoughts. But she wasn't alone.

Ginny never knew how long they sat there, just looking into the fire together. But it grew later and later, and her discomfort melted into acceptance and then into the oblivion of a dreamless sleep.

The next thing she knew, she was blinking drowsily awake as the gray light of early dawn cut through the front windows fell across her eyes. She sighed and stretched a little, and felt the oddly comforting presence of an unfamiliar warm body behind her on the couch. Too tired to be awkward about it, she twisted slightly and saw Draco Malfoy's tousled blond head resting lightly against her shoulder, realizing at the same moment that her own head was pillowed on his right arm, while his left was draped over her waist. As she looked at him, he stirred slightly, yawned, and opened his eyes. He met her gaze for a long moment, and then they smiled at each other. Not smirked, not grinned, not sneered. Just smiled, and only for a second. It should have been confusing, and it should have felt strange to wake up next to him and smile. But mostly it just felt warm. Comfortable and safe might have entered into the equation at some point as well.

They never talked about it. They hardly talked at all. But every night without fail, they would curl up on the couch in the front of the fire long after everyone else had gone to bed and fall asleep, only to wake up at dawn and go again to their respective rooms without a word exchanged. Ginny grew swiftly accustomed to his breath mingling with hers, the slightly sweaty smell of his body, and the feeling of him pressed against her. It wasn't even sexual, not for the first few weeks. It was just the feeling of not being alone, the comfort of another human beside her in the darkness. It was safety and happiness of an intimate kind that her family couldn't give, and it would have seemed repellant from anyone else. It was also love, though she didn't know that at the time.

Leaning against the filthy window, Ginny knew now what it had been, right from the beginning. Inexplicable and unexpected, but undoubtedly love. And now he was gone, and she was dead and frozen, sleeping and waking. No touch, no warmth, no breath. Just ice and a howling emptiness and sleep that never came.

Yes, the nights were the worst.

_Don't touch me. You'll freeze._

Evil always wins.


End file.
